ABSTRACT
The psychoanalytic process contains within it two seemingly opposed elements: a deconstructive procedure and an elaborative process. The patient brings a dream, a scrap of narrative, a random thought, and the analyst, by asking for associations, breaks down the manifest text of the material to reveal the unconscious latent content. In some respects this is an act of destruction, and most analysts are well accustomed to the patient’s initial distress over having his manifest context (his word) deconstructed in this manner. In time, however, the patient not only accustoms himself to this dismantling of his discourse but soon joins in the process. Analyst and patient then engage in a mutual destruction of manifest texts to voice the latent thoughts of the repressed unconscious.
